


Come Marching Home

by Churbooseanon



Series: Brave Soldier Boy [3]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - War, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-05-01 00:17:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,748
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5185034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Churbooseanon/pseuds/Churbooseanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coming home after everything is one of the hardest things he's ever done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Come Marching Home

There was a plan. As Leonard stepped into the too cool air of the airport, he tried to remind himself of that. There was a goddamn plan. He was going to surprise Michael. Get off the plane, grab his bags, head out. He didn’t want fanfare, he didn’t want his friends, he didn’t want anyone there to see him come back. None of this was supposed to be the return of a victorious hero. Church knew that, he knew what he was, he recognized just what it meant for the rest of his life. They weren’t heroes, they were the survivors. No, his goal was to get there, grab a cab, and show up at the door. He would collapse in Caboose’s arms and never leave. Just stay and hope those hands were the magic he remembered that washed away all Church had seen. All he had done. 

The shaking started as he stood just outside the gate. There were people around him, so many people. All of them there, sitting, waiting, smiling. No, not all smiling. Their eyes reach him, though. Each one a new brush he could almost feel. So many gazes, so many touches, so many different ideas. There were those that looked at him with anger in their eyes. Disgust. They were the ones that saw him for what he was, a killer for hire. A warm body that a weapon and power over life and death had been thrust into the hands of. They looked and saw what he was, what he had done, what he always would be.

Others looked at him with eyes full of praise. Look at that soldier there in his uniform. Look at the hero come back from war. He fought for us, he killed for us, he stood there as others died around him and promised to die for us. Or maybe they forgot that last part. Saw only what they wanted to in the uniform. The nobility, the purpose they had believed in. The uniform represented what they thought they were. Noble. Righteous. Strong and confident and the winners. Victory was what the uniform meant now.

They didn’t know that they gave Church a new one before he came back. A uniform with his name, nice and clean, his medals polished. Everything right back to clean cut. They don’t know how much effort it takes to try and get it clean. How many nights were spent in your bunk, trying to get the blood out of your socks. Not the blood of the people you were fighting. The blood of the man fighting next to him, because again Church managed to step into a puddle of someone who was his friend. Nights washing his socks over and over, even when the others said they were clean, because the blood just won’t come out. The only reason he could handle the ones he wore now was because he had new socks. New ones. No blood. Except the blood on his hands.

The eyes made his hands shake, made him tremble, made him want to run. How could they look at him like that? Didn’t they know what he’d done for them? What he’d been ordered to do? What is the uniform but an elaborate lie that made everything in his life before the moment he donned it a dream. What he had become…

There were things he could do to make it easier, of course. Make the eyes less bad. Make it… easier. Thing about the plan was that it worked just as well twenty minutes from now as it did now. A few minutes before the cab wasn’t going to be bad, except he needed to get his bag. Right, plan, keep to the plan. A plan which took him to the baggage claim. His is the only army duffle on the roundabout. Church picked it up, closed his eyes, and with a deep breath he headed out to find a cab. 

The air smelled different. He’d noticed that when he’d touched down at the base in the states. The smell of Texas air was burnt. Burnt and hot and too familiar. Everything around him the same and so very different. People all around, chattering and the words made no sense. All the words, always pressing in on him, the people all around, they see him, they know him, he can see that they can see right through him. Why won’t they stop looking, why won’t they…

The cabbie didn’t offer to put his bags in the trunk when Church held them tightly to his chest. Couldn’t let go, couldn’t let them get close enough to take away all he had left. This was all he had left. The best part was the man didn’t even ask or look at him twice when he asked to go to the nearest bar. Just delivered him and took his money. Just like the bartender who let him put his bag behind the bar and served him. The first was free. The second was free. The third and fourth and fifth and sixth he conned off of patrons. They wanted to support their returning servicemen. The seventh was a beautiful woman who frowned at him, used the drink to get him to agree to go get some sleep. 

When she asked where the cabbie could take him, where home was, Church shuddered. He couldn’t go home like this. But that, he supposed, was the beauty of the plan. No one knew he was coming in today, no one would mind if he took a night in a motel to get his head on straight. Nor, he thought the next afternoon when he woke up and searched for the hair of the dog that bit him, would they miss him another day. Or a third. A fifth. A week. Two. Three. A month. 

At night he watched the news as he lay on his motel bed, a six pack slowly draining before him. Watched the news and listened about the war. People coming home. Brave heroes marching back. The only thing he wanted when he saw it was another drink. He knew what he was. A hero wasn’t it. Just like the others he’d scratched tally marks into the stock of his weapon, tried to feign pride. Fought the nausea and washed his shocks. Every night before bed he washed his socks. Had to get the blood out. Had to get the blood out. 

Time flowed quickly from bottle to bottle. Day to day. Sleep, wake, shower, eat, drink, eat, drink, eat, drink, news, shower, sleep. It blurred, more than blurred. Flowed one into another. 

Sometimes he got close to the plan, he thought. Some mornings he woke up in his cold bed and craved the man who should be there. He’d start to pack everything up, throw away the bottles, dress. Then came the socks. He stared and watched and all that was left was the socks. Those sent him running for whatever drops of alcohol there was left. The last drips and drops that couldn’t satisfy him and so back to the bar. 

What else was there? What else was left to him? What else did he deserve other than to crawl into the bottle of the bottle and drown there? 

The pounding came to his door one night. He didn’t remember which. Friday maybe. Saturday? No, Friday definitely. He was planning on the bar, on the drinks he could get with stories that would never be true. The pounding came and it mirrored his head, and how dare they do that to him? Church thrust himself from the bed and threw the door open, ready to shout. 

“How?” he whispered instead. 

“Connie turns out to be as good at intel in the civilian world as she was in the field,” Tex answered softly. And then the disgust rolled onto her face. She was a real soldier, he knew. She was a warrior, a hero, a champion of the ideals he was supposed to stand for. Tex stood there, arms crossed over her chest, judging him for not standing up to her example. How could he? He was only human and she was something more. 

“You didn’t belong out there,” she said, moving forward and grabbing his arm to haul him back into the motel. 

“What are you…?” he started to ask, and when she jerked his arm toward the bed he was stumbling forward and onto it. “Dude, we are so over. I know I look good, but I’m spoken for.”

“I know,” Tex countered, the disgust reaching her voice. “I’ve been staying at the house since I got back. You have no clue how broken he is, waiting for you.”

Church actually scoffed at that. “He doesn’t even know the half of it.”

“He doesn’t,” Tex agreed immediately as she moved to join him. They sat side by side on the bed, and it felt right, to be there. To see someone who knew. How could understand. Who would know how to get blood out of socks. “That doesn’t mean you get to punish the man who loves you by letting him think you’re dead.”

“I’m not!” Church protested. “They would have told him.”

“But you’re not home either,” she countered. “You’re drunk in a motel less than ten minutes from your house, and you won’t even face him. What is he supposed to think? Because he doesn’t know anymore, Church. Maybe it’s not the same, but he’s broken too, and the only way he’s going to get better is with you at his side.”

“What about me?” Church snapped. “How do I get better?”

“Same way the rest of us do. One day at a time,” she answered, her hand settling on his knee. “I’m taking you home, Church, like it or not. You can either come kicking, screaming, and half drunk. Or you can take a week or two with me and we can get you cleaned up. But either way, if you don’t want to see him anymore, you have to be there to tell him. No matter what, Church, it’s time to come home.”

For a long moment they were silent, and at last Church just nodded. He could do it. With her to help him and Caboose to go home to, he thought he could manage it. 

Now if only he could live up to what he was supposed to want.


End file.
